Often, surfaces of substrates do not include desired performance characteristics. The failure to include specific desired performance characteristics can result in surface degradation in certain environments, an inability to meet certain performance requirements, or combinations thereof. For example, in certain environments, surfaces can be subjected to wear and other undesirable surface activities such as chemical adsorption, catalytic activity, corrosive attack, oxidation, by-product accumulation or stiction, and/or other undesirable surface activities.
Undesirable surface activities can cause chemisorption of other molecules, reversible and irreversible physisorption of other molecules, catalytic reactivity with other molecules, attack from foreign species, a molecular breakdown of the surface, physical loss of substrate, or combinations thereof.
To provide certain desired performance characteristics, a surface can include diamond-like carbon (DLC) with an arrangement of sp3 hybridized carbon atoms. However, such surfaces may have undesirable surface characteristics for certain applications.
Attempts to use such coatings on materials having an sp3 arrangement of carbon positioned to be contacted, for example, by a process fluid, a hydrocarbon, an analyte, exhaust, or a combination thereof, are unknown. Materials positioned in other places, such as, refrigerator shelves and automobile windshields, are not positioned in contact with such substances and, thus, generally focus on other issues.
Accordingly, functionalization of or on sp3 arrangements of carbon that shows one or more improvements in comparison to the prior art would be desirable in the art.